Another tragedy in Tibet….

October 15, 2006

Boing Boing is reporting on a story about Chinese soldiers shooting at a group of Tibetans attempting to flee across the border to Nepal. One of those killed was a nun, and several children were said to be in the group and were led away by soldiers afterward. According to a report in The Independent, Chinese diplomats in Nepal are “trying to track down hundreds of Western climbers and Sherpas who witnessed the killing of Tibetan refugees on the Nangpa La mountain pass last week,” The article has a slew of links worth following, including a graphic link to a Romanian television video

“…said to show a distant figure that its narrator says is a Chinese border guard firing a rifle and a separate scene of a person in a line of figures walking through the snow falling to the ground. An unidentified man near the camera can be heard saying in English, “They are shooting them like, like dogs.” Pro TV, Romania’s biggest private TV station, said the video was shot Sept. 30 by Sergiu Matei, a Romanian cameraman with an expedition climbing Cho Oyu, a Himalayan peak near China’s border with Nepal.”

Of course, the Chinese are claiming it was self-defense! It’s just degrees of horror in how China deals with Tibet. Which is worse, shooting and killing women and children attempting to flee the country that was invaded and repressed by a totalitarian regime, or torturing and executing human rights protesters and non-violent Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns as has been verified dozens of times?

It makes me sick, and sicker still that the West has let it go on since the 1950s, wanting to pacify China whenever possible due to economic partnerships.

Sadly, the last line of the Boing Boing report from Xeni Jardin says it all:

“…what is remarkable about this incident is not that it occurred, but that it receiving any attention in the West at all.”